Congrats on Boston!

Big congratulations are in order for John Batchelor and Derek Hurdle for their performance in the Boston Marathon on Monday. It is an accomplishment just to qualify for Boston in my eyes, but these two guys trained hard throughout the winter to ensure another strong race. Their training paid off. . .

John set a new PR on the challenging Boston course with a finishing time of 3:07:07. After cruising through the halfway point at 1:32:14, the late hills slowed him down just a touch. He still managed an amazing 7:09 pace for the race and finished in 2,182nd place. Only in Boston would a time that fast place you over 2000.

Derek, took a slightly more conservative pace from the start hoping to take in the entire Boston experience. I use the word "conservative" in relative terms, as he still ran a blistering 7:23 pace for the entire race and finished with a 3:13:20.

If you did not keep up with the Boston Marathon, it was a great race. On the women's side Teyba Erkesso dominated the race having almost a two minute lead late in the race. It really looked like a boring race to be honest. She started to have cramping in the final miles however, and Tatyana Pushkareva made a hard push to close the gap. By the final straight away, Tatyana had a sprinters kick and only missed claiming a victory by three seconds! Good thing for Teyba it was not a 26.3 mile race.

On the men's side a pack of about eight were running strong until about mile 20. At this point Robert K Cheruiyot and Deriba Merga made a move to stretch things out. Merga could not withstand Cheruiyot endurance and dropped back. Cheruiyot went on to not only win by 91 seconds, he also set the course record! Of more local interest Ryan Hall who had dropped way off the pace had one of the strongest finishes in the race. He came back from roughly 10th place and managed to pick off tired runners one at a time, eventually climbing to fourth place, only two seconds out of third! On most years his time was good enough to win, but not on a year when a course record was set.

Congrats to everyone on completing Boston!